And Chet
Baker, trumpeter and vocalist extraordinaire, is beginning
a three-week stint at Gaetano’s on Santa Fe Drive. Every
jazz buff in town puts in a few late nights listening to a
master blow cool and hot.

An unknown
number of the sessions are quietly taped by drummer Harry
Keevis Jr. on a reel-to-reel tape machine nestles among
his drums.

After an
unlikely set of events spanning 26 years and Baker’s
mysterious death in 1988, the tape reaches Baker’s widow,
Carol, who last year issued the best portions on a compact
disc titled "Chet Baker Live At Pueblo, Colorado, 1966."

In certain
circles the release propels Pueblo into jazz history. And
local jazz buffs who attended the gigs mark the occasion
by remembering a jazz giant, and an era in Pueblo’s
musical past.

Baker, 36
when he played Gaetano’s, embodied "West Coast Cool," a
jazz sound that developed in Los Angeles in the 1950s in
reaction to frenetic New York City bebop. As 22 he played
sideman to sax legend Charlie "Bird" Parker, who told
Miles Davis and Dizzy Gillespie: "There’s a little white
cat on the West Coast who’s gonna eat you up."

Baker’s
boyish good looks, silky voice, mellow horn playing and
association with baritone sax player Gerry Mulligan
catapulted him to the height of popularity in 1954, when a
Downbeat reader’s poll ranked him ahead of contemporaries
like Davis, Gillespie, Harry James and Louis Armstrong -
though Baker rejected his standing as a passing fancy.

Whether
Baker’s birth in Yale, Oklahoma, on the night before
Christmas eve, 1929, was star-crossed or not, his
association with heroin in the 1950s forever altered the
trajectory of his meteoric rise. By the time he reached
Pueblo, Baker could be described by associates as a
"deceitful, mysterious charmer," whose very survival made
fans and lovers "forgive him everything."

Al Aguilar,
56, who today co-manages the KG Men’s Store in Pueblo and
gigs in his spare time, is a jazz drummer who played with
Baker in California in 1957. After he moved to Pueblo,
Aguilar played regularly at the Alpine, another celebrated
(now defunct) jazz showcase on First Street. So when Baker
came to town in 1966, Aguilar headed to Gaetano’s.

` Inside,
Baker and his quartet were having lunch, part of their
pay. "I called out,’ Hey Chetty!’" Aguilar recalls today.
"And Baker looks around and says, ‘Nobody’s called me that
in a long time. Who’s that?’ I told him and we hugged.

"I sat in on
one set. And I emceed the first two sets. So my big thing
was: "Ladies and gentlemen, Pueblo’s finest supper club
presents Liberty recording artist Chet Baker and his
quintet.’ And only four guys walked out."

Aguilar
still blushes at the memory. And he still recalls the
tracks under Baker’s fingertips where the trumpeter was
injecting heroin, the bane of the era’s jazz musicians.

"That was
the last time I saw him." Aguilar says. "That was part of
Pueblo’s jazz heyday. It was something else. The best
musicians used to come through, and the audience here -
you can’t do anything without a good audience."

That
audience was composed of people like Ray Calderon, 63, a
retired nightclub owner and former county official who
caught most of Baker’s 66 sets.

"I like the
night life," Calderon says today. "I went into Gaetano’s
as a customer, sat down at the bar, and BS’d with Chet
Baker. He was a regular guy."

"Those guys
were humble," adds George Shaddy, 61, who in 1966
moonlighted as a bartender at Gaetano’s and recalls
serving Baker and his quartet.

One of the
surviving members of that quartet is tenor saxophonist
Phil Urso, 68, contacted in New Orleans after a gig.

"Chet was
very strong at those gigs, very melodic," Urso recalls.
"He was magic on the bandstand, it was like an alter. And
the people were good to us. The place was packed almost
every night."

Urso has
been Baker’s best man and briefly lived with the newlyweds
in New York City in the early ‘6o0s. According to the
liner notes on "Chet Baker in Pueblo," written by Carol
Baker, "(Urso) would think nothing of throwing open our
bedroom door at 4 o’clock in the morning to play something
he had just written.

"(Once) Chet
told him he would ‘kick his (expletive deleted) ass’ if he
knocked again. Chet loved Phil, but he also loved to
sleep."

Today, Urso
- whose vocabulary is still spiced with "man!" and "bread"
- remembers his friend with nothing but fondness.

"Chet Baker
was a great musician on the bandstand, and a wonderful
person off it," he says softly. "He knew how to treat
people."

Urso relates
that Baker was in route to California in the fall of 1966
when the trumpeter stopped in Colorado Springs to visit
Keevis, who rustled up the Gaetano’s gigs. Baker is
captured on the recently released CD treating his audience
to Thelonius Monk’s "Round Midnight." the jazz standard
"Green Dolphin Street," Davis’ "Milestones" and the bluesy
vocal ballad, "Forgetful."

"Jazz was at
its height then," says Calderon. And so, apparently, were
local jazz heads. "There were about 10 of us. We were a
bunch of nuts. Sometimes we’d load three or four cars and
drive to Denver to catch the club scene."

As to his
own musical inclinations, Calderon shrugs: "I couldn’t
carry a tune if you put it in a bag for me."

A review of
Baker’s recordings establishes that despite a hard road
nearly four decades long, he never lost his tender voice
or his touch on trumpet. Clearly, Baker was that rare
artist, one who could capture at will the moods of the
soul. A live recording made in Germany before his death in
May 1988 (he fell, or was pushed from a small second-story
window in Amsterdam) reveals, as one reviewer put it,
vocals "full of aching regret" and a "heartbreaking
trumpet.

As to
locals’ encounter with Baker in Pueblo in 1966, as with so
many brushes with jazz giants in the clubs of that era,
Calderon says with a smile: "You had to be in the right
place at the right time."

That was
Pueblo, November 1966.

(Ed Note: Carol Baker
still insists that this "gig" could not have taken place
in November 1966. She remembers that Chet’s teeth were
knocked out in San Francisco shortly after their daughter
Missy was born in June of 1966. She noted that Chet
couldn’t play the trumpet without those teeth.)

LETTER TO
THE EDITOR

Peter S.
Fricano

A few weeks
ago we received the following note and letter in the mail
from Peter Fricano, who lives in Dunkirk, New York.

"Dear Chet’s
Choice:

I have known
Diane Vavra since 1961. We are soulmates of a special
kind. I was with her through many of the turbulent 18
years of her time with Chet. She has given me permission
to share this correspondence with you.

Hope you can
use this. Thanks,"

Diane:

You asked me
to send you a few thoughts about Chet. You know I have not
written anything about this in a long time. You asked,
"Where does all the pain come from?" I have no answer. I
know it does not come from drugs. It is something deeper
than that.

When Chet
opened at (the) New Orleans Club in 1970 (His first major
gig after his injury in San Francisco) he played a riff by
Charlie Parker to summon the band back to the stage. Chet
looked out at the audience and said, "Nobody remembers."
Ralph Gleason who was there that night gave Chet a
scathing review, ending it with "A Musical Tragedy, a
Kalfkian Nightmare". But he heard Chet’s remark. "That’s
right Chet, nobody did."

A few weeks
later I ran into Gleason at a Fantasy Records picnic and
asked him why he had devoted his whole column in the San
Francisco Chronicle (Herb Caen length) to the gig with
such vengeance. He replied, "You don’t have to stay the
whole set to know its bad." I replied, "Did you know
Ralph, that after Chet read that review he punched out all
the windows in his apartment? It’s one thing to be an
honest critic, another to get so carried away with your
rhetoric that you lose all sense of compassion." "I didn’t
know that," he said.

He left and
about half an hour later Gleason came around and said,
"Let’s talk about this some more." So we did have a rather
lengthy discussion about music, talent, genius, compassion
and pain and suffering. We did agree that part of the pain
comes from saying something profound and intimate and
lyrical and - nobody hears it - nobody remembers.

You remember
the tragic note Chet wrote about six months before his
death.

That’s what
we all hang on to, Chet, I’ll remember you.

I miss you,
Diane.

Love, Pete.

****

A
CONVERSATION WITH PHIL MARKOWITZ

April 17, 1993

Phil
Markowitz, keyboardist, and composer played with
Chet from 1979 to 1983. He currently plays with
Dave Liebman’s group. We talked on Saturday prior
to his Sunday departure for a 4-week tour in
Europe.

CAREER LAUNCHED AT ‘73 NEWPORT JAZZ FESTIVAL

Phil
graduated from the Eastman School of music with a
major in composition and theory. George Wein,
Producer of the Newport Jazz Festival picked
Phil’s group as the 1973 Young Artist’s Group of
the year, and they played at the Festival.

Following graduation Phil came to New York City
and quickly found a place on the music scene,
doing studio work by day and gigs at night with
Joe Chambers, Jeremy Steig, et. al.

CHET’S 4-YEAR WORKING BAND

In
1978 Phil met Chet through Jon Burr, bassist. Chet
was playing at Stryker’s Pub. Following this
meeting Chet assembled a group which played with
him for approximately four years: Markowitz on
piano, Jon Burr on bass, Jeff Brillinger on drums
and Roger Rosenberg on baritone sax. Phil says,
"We were a good match. We became a working band."

"Chet had just done a record, You Can’t Go Home
Again. The arrangements were by Don Sebesky,
and we played all those charts. Our first tour was
through the mid-west; Jazz Showcase in Chicago,
then The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California.
We ended at Keystone Corner in San Francisco.

CHET’S BEST GIGS NOT ALWAYS RECORDED

"The
band minus Roger and Jon did three long tours of
eight to nine weeks in Europe. On the second tour
we did two records. Broken Wing (EMI) was
done in the afternoon. We played a gig in Paris
that evening and, after the gig, we cut Two A
Day. The most amazing thing about the whole
day was Chet was at his best at the gig. He was
really on."

Had
the audience inspired him and made the difference?
Phil thought not because, "Chet was a quiet,
almost insular person. He was extremely attentive
to the music. In the truest form of jazz playing,
it’s not a show, but really about the interaction
between the musicians. Chet always concentrated on
his playing and listening. He was certainly one of
the most attentive listeners I’ve ever seen on the
bandstand. He was not only a master, he was a
great student."
KIND OF LIKE MOZART

"From 1978 to 1983 I played almost every gig Chet
did for 4 years. He was so lyrical. He had the
greatest melodic style and an absolutely flawless
sense of time and timing. His linear stuff was so
refined, kind of like Mozart. If you took one note
out, it would destroy the line. Musically we were
very similar, I came up listening to Miles. When I
got together with Chet, I was so well versed in
the cool and Miles’ mid-60’s period that we
clicked. Chet took the Miles influence and kept
contemporizing himself."

CHET TAUGHT ME

"I
learned a lot about comping and lines. If you
played one wrong note, it showed. Chet could read
notes, but no changes. He played stuff by ear. He
got my head out of the music. While we were on
tour Chet finished his solo and put his horn on my
music so I couldn’t see. That was a great lesson,
and I started memorizing things. I don’t know if
it was deliberate or not, but most of Chet’s
communication about music was spontaneous and
non-verbal..

"His
style and demeanor on the bandstand were so
precise and defined that if you had any
sensitivity you knew what to do. He got the best
out of musicians. He was very unselfish. His solos
weren’t very long. He would let you stretch out to
the max. Both his speech and his music were very
concise. If something didn’t please him, he’d let
you know, but he was never malicious. Often you
didn’t know you’d been zapped until later.

"Chet liked intimate sound. A festival where we
played in Germany was held in a huge hockey
stadium with the ultimate rock sound system. I’ve
never seen Chet this way, but he walked to the
microphone and said ‘Turn it down." The volume and
inflection in his voice was completely out of
character. The audience applauded."

THE CCB LABEL

CCB
Records, Carol and Chet’s company, hopes to
release one of Carol’s personal tapes which have
never been marketed as well as new material and
artists whose styles are compatible with Chet’s.
Looking For The Light, is the first
recording without Chet. Chet baker Live at
Buffalo was the initial release followed by
Chet Baker at Pueblo Colorado 1966.

Phil
has worked with Carol on editing, mastering, and
producing the product. Chet made numerous
recordings, but got money up front and no
royalties. Carol, as executor of the estate, has
spent much time and money taking legal action to
get the income which is rightfully Chet’s and his
heirs. Supporting CCB is supporting Chet’s family.
The music business if rife with stories o how
musicians make the music, but others reap the
financial rewards. For instance, INA, a huge radio
conglomerate run by the French Government recently
released a radio broadcast that featured Phil with
Chet. None of the musicians have been paid, and
Phil intends to check on this while he is in
Europe.

"Three years ago Artt Frank began work on a
biographical screenplay about Chet called, You
Can’t Go Home Again. He needed an arrangement
of the title song written by Don Sebesky, and
asked me to arrange it for a soundtrack demo to
accompany the script. Davia Sacks, my wife who is
also a singer, lyricist, and composer heard the
music and like it so much that she composed the
lyrics. I just sent the music, but about a year
later Artt called saying he needed lyrics."

The
movie is yet to be but a group composed of Artt on
drums, Davia on vocals, Phil on piano, Billy
Dowling on trumpet, and Dave Liebman on soprano
saxophone, have recorded a tribute to Chet called
Looking For The Light. Several m\numbers
were written especially for Chet. The
instrumentals are: Up Chet’s Alley by Phil,
and This one’s For Chet by Billy Dowling.
Davia wrote the lyrics for You Can’t Go Home
Again, and the music and the lyrics for
Looking For The Light. Davia’s vocals are a
surprise, so different and yet so right. Her
lyrics capture the images of Chet’s jazzman life:
The Pied Piper, The Wanderer, The Lost Boy.
Davia’s voice is pure and crystalline; the passion
and lyricism are wrenching. There are reminders of
Streisand, but she is her own stylist. Even if you
didn’t know Chet Baker, this would be a good jazz
album. The fact that it is filled with so much
love makes it very special.
CHET THE MAN

Phil
recalls Chet as a "very nice, civil, pretty
patient man. It took a lot to rile him up, but
when he did he really went off for a minute. He
was very opinionated, but kept his opinions to
himself. If you asked him, he would tell you what
he thought. He was very worldly and somewhat
cynical.

"I
never thought of Chet as an outdoor person but
when we did a gig in the mountains of Switzerland
we took a walk in the woods. He thoroughly enjoyed
it and was into nature." Phil thought this was
probably a reminder of his farm days in Oklahoma.

After the amazing comeback following the loss of
his teeth, Chet had to use dental adhesive to keep
his dentures in place. Only one brand, Fasteeth,
worked. Chet did not always femember to keep an
adequate supply so there were often desperate,
last minute trips to locate stores that stocked
Chet’s brand. Without Fasteeth, Chet couldn’t
play.

Phil
remembers "Chet the Gypsy". He was never
encumbered with bank accounts, real estate, or the
usual possessions we all think are necessary. He
just took his trumpet and went where the music led
him."

THE END

Betty 11-21-93

(Ed note: In
addition to the two albums Broken Wing and
Two A Day two live sessions that Phil did
with Chet have also been released on CD; Live
In Chateauvallon and Live At Nicks.
There are also some private recordings floating
around of jobs that Phil did with Chet. On in
particular is from the Montmartre in
Copenhagen in December or 1978.

Phil also has a
trio session out on CD, Sno’ Peas, with
Eddie Gomez and Al Foster on bass and drums. The
title track which was written by Phil was recorded
by Bill Evans and Toots Thielsmans on the
Affinity album. Apparently Bill Evans heard
the tune one night when Phil was playing a date
with Toots and decided to include it in an album
they were working on. In addition to Thielsmans,
Phil also worked with the Mel Lewis Orchestra from
1983 to 1985 and with Al Dimeola.

I have always had
a certain affection for Phil’s playing. For many
years Broken Wing was the only post 1970
album of Chet Baker’s that I could find. To keep
from wearing out the album as I did with Baby
Breeze I taped it and the only time I played
the album was to make another tape (I wore out
four tapes). I wouldn’t even let anyone borrow it
because I could never find another copy. Anyway, I
know that album by heart and that’s why when the
CD came out a couple of tracks sounded different
and I realized they were alternate tracks.

Phil is right in
that Chet always seems better in a live session
than in the studio. As much as I love Broken
Wing the whole feel of Live At Nick’s
is so much more alive, so much more swinging
because of that special feeling of spontaneity a
live session has. My favorite all-time piano solo
is Phil’s on Beautiful Black Eyes on
Nick’s album. His solos during this time
matched Chet’s solos - spare, single lines - solos
not orchestral arrangements. I also dig the quote
from "Dixie" Although Phil only worked with Chet
for a couple of years, they really made some
beautiful music.)

THE CIRCLE SESSIONS

Circle Records is a German company in Koln
(Cologne), Germany. In 1980 and 1981 Circle set up
their equipment in three different night clubs to
record Chet Baker and his group on the particular
nights. These sessions resulted in ten LP records
and two CDs. The LPs run in length from 37 minutes
to almost 60 minutes.

The
first session was on the 22nd of March, 1980, at
the Subway Club in Koln. Chet was working
with a quartet that night with Nicola Stillo on
flute, Dennis Luxion on piano and Riccardo del Fra
on bass. This session produced three LPs: In
Your Own Sweet Way, Just Friends, and Down.

The
second session was at the Le Dreher Club in
Paris, France, on the 25th and 27th of June, 1980,
and resulted in four LPs: Night Bird, Tune Up,
It Never Entered My Mind and Conception;
and two CDs: Tune Up and Night Bird.
All of the tunes on the CDs are on the LPs except
for a twenty five minute rendition of Russ
Freeman’s No Ties, recorded on the 27th and
not issued previously. The musicians on this
session were Karl Ratzer on guitar, Nicola Stillo
on flute, Reccardo del Fra on bass and Al Levitt
on drums on some of the numbers.

The
final Circle session was recorded at the Salt
Peanuts Club in Koln on the 21st, 23rd and
25th of May, 1981, and resulted in three LPs:
My Funny Valentine, Round Midnight and I
remember You. The musicians on this engagement
were Chet on vocal and trumpet, Jon Eardly on
flugelhorn, Bob Mover on alto sax, Dennis Luxion
on piano, Rocky Knauer on bass and Burkhart
Ruckert on drums on the 21st and 23rd sessions.

The
Circle people can get a lot of music on one LP as
witnessed by the 60 minute album, In Your Own
Sweet Way and Tune Up. They do this be
leaving less space between the grooves so you have
to be very careful because it is easy to get a
scratch or glitch in the vinyl.

When
I first found these Circle sessions in the store
there were only two LPs: In Your Own Sweet Way
and Tune Up. This was before I really
got into collecting and I agonized over which one
to buy, finally selecting the Tune Up disc.
The next evening (a Sunday) I listened to a jazz
program hosted by the proprietor of the record
store and he played the 27 minute No Ties
track from the other LP on the air. I was on the
phone to him at the station before the track was
finished making him promise to hold the other disc
until I could get to the store the next day and
buy it. This store sold new and used LPs, mainly
jazz, and I spent many an hour (and dollar) in
there. It was a sad day for all jazz fans in the
area when it closed.

THE FIRST SESSION

The
Subway Club session first LP begins with Chet
introducing the guys in the band and then he goes
into a twenty seven and one half minute rendition
of Russ Freeman’s No Ties, taken a medium
tempo, not at the breakneck speed with which the
original recording was played, although Chet does
play in places where the notes ‘flow like a
waterfall’, Chet makes a short statement of the
melody and then takes off on a fourteen minute
solo, which runs the gamut from sweet and soft to
fast and hot. At one point Chet uses a "colorful
metaphor" to express disgust with his inability to
"blow" what he wants to say. I don’t know how many
choruses he plays because every time I try to
count them I get carried away by the music and
lose count.

The
Dave Brubeck tune In Your Own Sweet Way is
next up. The Quartet plays it in a medum tempo for
fifteen minutes.

Old Devil Moon, the next cut, is a
tune seldom recorded by Chet and the quartet takes
this sixteen minute track at a fast pace.

Just Friends, the second LP, has
two tracks: a twenty five minute title track and
on the other side a twenty three minute run
through of Horace Silver’s tune, Doodlin’.

The
third LP from this session , Down also has
two tracks. One is a seventeen minute playing of
Russ Freeman’s Afternoon At Home from the
Chet Baker-Russ Freeman Quartet 1956
Pacific Jazz album. On the flip side is a twenty
minute track of the title tune, written by Kenny
Dorham. All in all three great discs of some very
nice live playing by the Quartet.

THE SECOND SESSION

The
second session from Le Dreher Club in Paris
features the same musicians except for the German
guitarist Karl Ratzer in for Dennis Luxion and Al
Levitt plays drums on some tracke.

The
first LP in this session is Night Bird and
consists of Jimmy Heath’s D’s Dilemma
(15’20), and on the other side are Enrice
Perananunzi’s Night Bird (13’25), and Bud
Powell’s Tempus Fugit (11’15).

The
next disc is Tune Up with There’ll Never
Be Another You for eighteen and a half
minutes, Richie Bierach’s Leaving for
eighteen minutes and Miles Davis’ Tune Up
for eleven minutes.

The
third LP in this set is Conception which
features Wayne Shorter’s Beautiful Black Eyes
(20’15), The Touch Of Your Lips by Ray
Noble, a vocal (16’05), and George Shearing’s
Conception (15’12).

The
fourth LP, It Never Entered My Mind, also
has three tracks, the title track for eighteen
minutes Just Friends for thirteen minutes
and I Remember You for twelve minutes.

THE THIRD SESSION

This
session at the Salt Peanuts Club in Koln in
my opinion is the best of the bunch. Dennis Luxion
is back on piano with Rocky Knauer and Burkhart
Ruckert on bass and drums, but there are three
horns on the front line now. Bob Mover, an alto
saxophonist who played some in the early 70s with
Chet is back on alto and Jon Eardly, who was the
first trumpet player to take Chet’s place with the
Mulligan quartet, is playing fluglehorn.

The
numbers from the three nights at the Salt
Peanuts feature some great heads. For those
that might not know, a ‘head’ is an arrangement
that is not written down. It is usually worked out
in a rehersal session and is played that way from
then on. Eardley’s mellow fluglehorn and Mover’s
alto blend with Chet’s trumpet to create a warm,
pleasing sound together and a backdrop for some of
the solos.

The
first disc has four tracks; Jimmy Heath’s
Resonant Emotions (9’ 50), Ray Brown’s
Ray’s Ideas (13’00), My Funny Valentine
(7’ 50) and If I Should Lose You (14’30).